I want more coffee. You say: no, stay there. I’ll get it. I am breakfast. I am this thing. I have made myself and so I am. You bring me coffee. On your sheets I later find what I bleed: streaks of me. What you did you do you keep on doing and look: I’ve let you. Instructed thus: yes, let’s.

*

After. Is what defines us. Only: opposite of, since it’s a fictive. You say: look. there’s a lake in the backyard. two robins stick-legged island grass, You say: they’ve been there for days. You worry. I worry. You stick your palm into the air a gesture saying: hold it. And so I do. Was I ever good at all the arts of acquiescence. abeyance. obsolescence. But: we are not touching: you shake my hand as you did some months before. I came alone. A public space. So unexpected. You shook my hand you pulled me across the lecture room a lecture room I was your disorder. And now: you are mine.

*

We look for books. We are talking. Except: this is another fictive. Imaginary confusion: there is no we. There is you and your books and a tawdry slice of morning. What I would do. What I have chosen. You look for books you are finding and not lending. Borrow: what. Bodies: my body. Promise: you like to hear yourself talk. Those words: so what is meaning.

*

What the smallest mouse will do: wean herself to crumbs.

*

another day, all these days pile up. a day. maybe, this day could be mine? maybe, could I keep one for me? the day of my untangling. the day of my blood so sticky and I sat and saw you cross the path you…it was morning. You made me leave and I was there and so I saw you I saw you cross I did not mean to see you and then wished I hadn’t.

*

the most unsavory thing. once a week. I sit in a chair rather underneath your feet. the most strident and pinched utterance. once a week. I feel you shifting. Above me. where I cannot go I cannot even utter. I watch your colleague lick me with his eyes I watch this. I do something with my lips. I maybe lick them. Things I do. It unsettles. I do it again. I stretch. A cat. I feel you up there. You’re heavy through the floors. I feel you busy. I feel you feeling me that was this morning or was it yesterday. the time confounds me as do ceilings. floors. rules. I opened a door once this was several weeks ago I opened there you were. before. we were lovers. you in glasses. I did not know. there was a long moment a long moment of: oh. in that moment I knew you knew and I did too and so it begins. again and again it is beginning. I feel you up there. is her new thigh heavy? or sodden with kisses? so un, unlike mine.

*

doors. I would like to know why, in winter, one keeps one’s screen door affixed. I would like to know why, in winter, one keeps one’s screen door locked. and I would most especially like to know why, in winter, at six o’clock in the morning when the woman you are fucking, let’s not presume to call her your lover since you’ve both agreed that’s not what she is. but still, the thing that I would like to know is why, in winter, at six o’clock on a Friday, on a holiday, on a morning when she primps and plucks and tilts and wheels across the ten miles to your unkempt apartment what I would like to know is: why? why do you lock her? why do you lock her? lock her? out.

*

because your moon crescent lips tilt me so completely. because your hair as soft as children. because your fingers splay out in no ordinary way. and when your eyes go funny. because the skin at your collarbone is made of paper. and so is mine. because the thing in you I see I recognize. because there are ten thousand ways of loving and each one is your name. because I could forgive you everything except your silence. because you know I know this. because of how we talk. in the ten seconds after what you tell me. because we are both in love with impossibility more than people. impossible me. impossible you.

*

and so we end as all things end not in sweetness not in sour in simply: done. ever simple. simple sugar. simple salt. which one of us was we when we were in that. so tired and old these endings. let us end as we began. in bitters. this morning you are back to keeping silent absent now. this other morning you say as if everything just vanishing sugar melts in water salt on tongue uncrystals as your sweat. your ample sweat. you send a word. a string of them you say: (     ) and I say: (     ) and no reply. and no reply.

* *